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Chapter 14 - Chapter-14 The Birth Of Purgatory

When Yggdrasil's roots first pierced the abyss, the cosmos began to still — but the stain of Arae remained.

Even dormant, his presence festered like a wound that refused to close. His curse had seeped too deeply, infecting the foundation of existence.

The Primordials, weary yet resolute, gathered their strength one final time.

From the remnants of their shattered battleground, they tore open a fracture in the veil of Nothingness.

The wound bled energy so dense it warped the concept of form itself.

Matter and meaning inverted, folding into spirals of contradiction and despair.

From the husk of Arae's broken divinity, a new realm took shape — one that could not exist within the ordered planes of creation.

A realm not of birth, but of containment.

Not of balance, but of rejection.

Purgatory.

It began as a storm of raw divinity, swirling with the discarded fragments of countless realities — echoes of strength, motion, will, and shadow, all crushed into one chaotic mass.

Its skies bled colorless light, and its ground pulsed like the flesh of a sleeping god.

Mountains rose and fell within seconds, oceans of ichor evaporated and reformed in spiraling loops, and through it all, the faint pulse of Arae's corrupted energy lingered — silent, waiting.

The Primordials anchored this new dimension with chains forged from their own essence.

Each link was bound by paradox: logic entwined with chaos, spirit fused with silence, protection merged with destruction.

The chains stretched through the infinite dark, embedding themselves into the folds of unreality until the prison stood complete.

At its center lay the Hollow Core — the cradle of Arae's slumber.

There, time fractured into splinters. Past, present, and future collapsed into one endless spiral around his resting form.

Reality itself refused to remain constant; space bent inward, folding upon its own concept until even distance ceased to mean anything.

And so, Purgatory became the first forbidden realm — a scar carved into the fabric of creation.

It was the inverse of Yggdrasil: where the Tree embodied growth and order, Purgatory embodied decay and distortion.

Where Yggdrasil's branches reached toward light, Purgatory's roots descended endlessly into the dark.

Its existence was both necessity and regret — a monument to the price of divinity, and to the sin of trusting what was never meant to be healed.

The Sealing of Arae

The Curse had devoured the Primordials.

Madness. Paranoia. Betrayal.

Ten divine minds twisted into ruin by one whisper — Arae's.

And yet, when the Seed of Yggdrasil sprouted, light returned. The madness receded like a tide dragged away by unseen moons. One by one, the gods awoke — bloodied, hollow, but sane.

They stood upon the scar they had carved into Nothingness. The air trembled with the weight of their realization: their unity was gone, their innocence dead.

But before them lay the source of their fall.

Arae.

He was no longer a god, nor a creature. His body lay shattered — a monument of broken geometry. His essence leaked in threads of uncolored fire. His breath came out in static bursts, his veins pulsing with the residue of ten fallen realms. He slept — not in peace, but in paralysis.

And the Primordials knew: this was their only chance.

They gathered. The void bent under their presence. The cradle of reality shook as the ten circled their betrayer, each bearing the weight of both judgment and sorrow.

The Chains of Logic

Hephaestus raised his hand, sparks of pure creation flickering across his body. His voice rumbled like a forge beneath the skin of the universe.

"I am the maker of the real. From my hands, inevitability is born. May you be bound by the very law that defines existence."

From the folds of Nothingness, serpentine bands of metal and thought slithered forth — the Chains of Logic.

Each link sang with the sound of truth given form.

They coiled around Arae's limbs, chest, and throat, tightening with the pressure of divine reason until his body began to crack like cooled glass.

Arae twitched — his head jerked once, a spark of consciousness flickering in the ruin of his mind.

The Weight of Strength

Then Kaiser stepped forward, eyes dimmed, his wounds still bleeding golden essence. His muscles convulsed like tectonic plates shifting.

"I carried the weight you sought to destroy. If strength was your desire, then you shall bear it — forever."

He drew upon the void, condensing all weight, all pressure, all density of creation into a single point. A sphere of infinite mass, radiant and invisible, took form above Arae's body.

With a guttural roar, Kaiser lowered it upon him.

The sphere pressed down, crushing Arae into the foundation of Purgatory itself. The ground screamed. Arae's ribs shattered like celestial glass. His limbs bent inward, pinned beneath a punishment that would never lessen.

Kaiser staggered back, his chest heaving.

The Slow March of Time

Savitar appeared in a blur of fractured light, his body flickering like a film caught between frames. He gazed at Arae — the only being who had ever slowed his motion through corruption.

"You made us race toward ruin. Now you will crawl through eternity."

He reached forward, fingers vibrating until they pierced the concept of duration itself.

With a flick of his hand, the motion of time condensed around Arae, slowing infinitely.

Arae's pulse became the crawl of eons. Every heartbeat stretched into a millennium. Every blink was the birth and death of stars.

Savitar turned away. "Run from this if you can."

The Madness Returned

From the shadows of the void, Moara stepped forward, her form flickering like a silhouette stitched together by curses. The runes carved into her body glowed, bleeding hexed blood that shimmered like oil.

"You infected us with madness… Now choke on your own contagion."

She lifted her palm. From her veins poured a spiral of glyphs, a curse older than logic, one that turned awareness against itself.

The tendrils slithered into Arae's head, fusing with his mind.

His eyes twitched beneath their lids.

From within, a new whisper began — his own voice, multiplied infinitely, laughing, pleading, screaming. He would know no silence again.

The Tenfold Seal

Then came Aegriya, her form wrapped in light and order. Her eyes glowed with calm fury.

"Essence unbound cannot be contained. Then let it be divided."

She thrust her arms forward, tracing sigils across the void. Glyphs the size of universes flared into being around Arae, forming spiraling mandalas that spun like rotating suns.

Each sigil carved a part of his being away — fragment by fragment, until his essence splintered into ten shards.

Each shard screamed in a different tone.

Aegriya's voice rang cold and final:

"Ten pieces of you, scattered through ten barriers. None shall ever reunite."

She sealed the fragments within crystalline vaults of light, floating eternally within the folds of Purgatory.

The Wailing of Souls

Thanamira descended next, her spectral form rippling between life and death. Around her, millions of spirits howled — the lost echoes of those who perished in the divine war.

"May their voices be the lullaby that haunts you. May their pain remind you of what you have done."

She extended her hand.

The storm of souls rushed into Arae, phasing through his body. Their wails merged with his mind, merging agony with madness.

Every moment, he would hear the cries of every spirit ever touched by his corruption.

He would never sleep. Never rest.

The Eternal Lightning

Then, Voltraeus emerged — black lightning crawling through his veins, eyes like collapsing suns.

"Every breath you take will burn. Every thought you have will crackle."

He formed a spear of shadowed lightning — a bolt that would never cease, never fade — and drove it into Arae's chest.

The surge of energy rooted itself in his core, igniting him from within. Each jolt was a lifetime of pain. Each pulse, a memory of rage.

The Drowning Flow

Poseidara followed, silent and stern, her trident dripping with endless tides.

"You drowned us in despair. Now drown in yourself."

She conjured a sea that did not exist — an ocean of memory and suffocation. It flowed into Arae's lungs, saturating his being.

Every breath he took would feel like his body filling with water.

Every exhale, an endless suffocation that would never end.

The Memory of Darkness

Then came Nocturne. His form was an emptiness shaped like a man, eyes twin eclipses. He reached down and pressed his palm to Arae's brow.

"You wanted to be remembered. Then be remembered as ruin."

The darkness around him ignited, burning without fire, erasing concepts as it spread.

It carved into Arae's identity, burning away all that he was — leaving only a memory of his malice, a brand that even oblivion would not cleanse.

The Judgment of Wisdom

Finally, Artemis stepped forward, her body radiant with knowledge and grief. She looked down upon Arae, her eyes reflecting not hatred, but sorrow.

"You sought to understand everything. But you never learned restraint."

"So learn through silence."

Her hand brushed across his forehead. In that instant, she sealed his consciousness inside his own thought — a prison of pure logic, where every question multiplied endlessly without answer.

The Primordials stood together one last time.

The Chains tightened. The lightning burned. The souls wailed. The waters suffocated. The seals glowed.

And then Arae stirred.

Cracks tore across his body. His eyes snapped open — twin abysses of spiraling light.

"Chains," he whispered — his voice like a collapsing dimension. "You think to bury me in inevitability? I am the lie that makes truth falter. I am the answer that breaks the question!"

He rose — every movement unmaking the rules that bound him. The void screamed, existence buckled. But Yggdrasil's roots had already reached him, drinking the contradictions, feeding on his chaos.

For the first time, Arae felt it — inevitability.

As the chains dragged him downward, he spat his final curse:

"Then I curse your children! Every fruit your Yggdrasil bears shall be mine to spoil!! When their blood stains the roots, I will crawl back!!! I will eat your tree from within!!!! When the last Chosen dies—"

The void shattered. His voice split into infinite echoes.

The chains yanked him into Purgatory.

"—you die with them."

And then, silence.

The Primordials stood, trembling. The chains rattled once… and were gone. Only Yggdrasil's light pulsed faintly across the endless dark.

Arae was buried.

But not destroyed.

And in the quiet that followed, his curse began to bloom.

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